The present invention relates to a tubular knit fabric like gloves knitted by operating a flat knitting machine and a method of executing specific processes to prevent wrist-edge domains of the tubular knit fabric from incurring disintegration of stitched yarns.
Conventionally, gloves are knitted by operating a glove knitting machine in those sequential orders cited below. Initially, four finger domains corresponding to the little finger, third finger, middle finger, and the forefinger, are respectively formed, followed by formation of the four-finger body, the thumb, and the five-finger body. Next, the wrist domains and the wrist-edge aperture domains are automatically knitted before the processed gloves are eventually disengaged from the glove knitting machine.
Nevertheless, those gloves disengaged from the glove knitting machine are not yet complete with the final process for preventing the knitted stitches from disintegrating themselves, and therefore, these gloves are not yet offerable on the market.
Conventionally, wrist-edge aperture domain is treated with a darning process by operating an overlocking machine to prevent the edge yarns from disintegrating themselves. However, in order to execute the darning process, an additional sewing process must be executed after formation of the knitted gloves. This in turn results in an increased cost in the production of gloves.
Therefore, in order to solve the problems inherent in the conventional practice, a variety of methods have thus been proposed by a number of applicants including the applicant related to the invention.
Typically, the proposed method initially forms stitches of several circumferential courses of the knitted terminal including those courses supposed to make up the wrist-edge aperture domain on the way of knitting gloves with those yarns capable of restraining knitted yarns from disintegrating themselves before the formed several-round stitches are subject to a thermal treatment so that the wrist-edge yarns can be prevented from disintegrating themselves.
There are a variety of yarns which are available for preventing wrist-edge stitches from disintegration like the one related to the method proposed by the Japanese Patent Laid-Open Publications No. 58-163703 of 1983, No. 51-122532 of 1976, and others. These methods disclosed in the Japanese Patent Publications No. 60-52222 of 1985 and No. 61-17938 of 1986 are widely made available today.
Concretely, those yarns available for prevention of wrist-edge stitches from incurring disintegration cited for explanation of the above methods are respectively alleged to be free from incurring disintegration by virtue of the execution of those sequential processes including the following: Initially, thermally contractile core-forming elastic yarns are encircled in conjunction with those yarns which are free of thermal fusibility and thermohardening property and available for covering the core elastic yarns, and then, these yarns are superficially added with thermofusing yarns to be encircled in conjunction with the above yarns in the direction opposite from each other. These encircled yarns are made available for composing stitches of several-round courses of the knitted terminal including those courses supposed to make up wrist-edge aperture domain on the way of knitting gloves. This in turn permits intersections between needle loops and sinker loops of stitches of continual courses to adhere to each other due to thermally fused effect of thermofusing yarns, thus allegedly restraining the wrist-edge stitches from disintegrating themselves.
Nevertheless, as mentioned above, when knitting conventional gloves using the above-cited yarns for preventing the wrist-edge aperture domain from disintegration, these yarns are knitted into stitches corresponding to several-round courses at the knitted terminal including those courses which are supposed to make up the wrist-edge aperture domain.
However, since the conventional knitting process is executed by feeding those yarns to all the knitting needles which are commonly available for the knitting of wrist domain as well as for retaining stitches of the wrist edge so that knitted yarns at the wrist edge domain can be prevented from disintegrating themselves. In consequence, the wrist edge domain cannot fully be fastened by applying thereon contracting effect of those yarns provided for preventing the wrist-edge aperture domain from incurring disintegration, but the wrist-edge aperture domain is apt to turn into trumpet-like shape, thus seriously degrading appearance of the knitted gloves.
To solve this problem, conventionally, on the way of knitting the wrist-edge aperture domain, rubber yarns available for fastening the wrist-edge aperture domain are tacked on those courses respectively being composed of those yarns for preventing the wrist-edge yarns from disintegration in order to strengthen the fastening force of the wrist-edge aperture domain.
This method certainly generates such force enough to fasten the wrist-edge aperture domain. On the other hand, this method in turn causes specific problems to arise.
Concretely, since the wrist-edge aperture domain is jointly knitted with rubber yarns, rubber yarns is apt to visibly show up from the wrist-edge aperture domain to adversely affect the appearance of the knitted gloves.
Furthermore, consumable amount of rubber yarns adds up the production cost. In addition, execution of those conventional methods cited above also causes a variety of problems to arise. These problems are described below.
Using all the knitting needles available for the knitting of wrist domains, the conventional method knits the wrist-edge aperture domain by following identical plain knitting processes, and therefore, the final-course loop of the edge domain is unavoidably positioned at the wrist-edge aperture domain. When a consumer tries to put the knitted gloves on, his fingers may easily be caught by the final-course loop, and as a result, despite the preventive measure, looped yarns are easily disintegrated from each other. Furthermore, presence of the final-loop yarns causes the wearer to feel uncomfortable because the looped yarns directly come into contact with the wearer's wrist skin.